24 April 2017 Andrey Ivanov
A large European company decided to migrate their Oracle database system to SQL Server. Of course, they wanted to outmaneuver the performance of their original system. The original cus...
Why migrate your Oracle Reports?
Plenty of institutions keep their data in an Oracle Database and visualize it with the help of Oracle Reports. To do that, they need to put extra effort every year to maintain the system and retain their users’ loyalty. Even though the technologies you run for a long time might seem the safe way to go, Oracle has officially deprecated Oracle Reports. Oracle realized that the old client-server architecture is not suitable for running on the web. According to Oracle’s document Oracle Reports – Statement of Direction dated April 2019, Oracle advises migrating Oracle Reports to their Oracle BI Publisher. Although the corporation does have a utility for converting Oracle Reports to Oracle BI Publisher, the process is less than optimal and you got locked into the Oracle stack.
We at DB Best came up with the technology to help companies migrate Oracle Reports to modern and cost-effective SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) platform. This migration also allows keeping all the data in your existing Oracle Database, which contributes to an easier and quicker transfer to modern architecture.
Why take so much effort to support your desktop Oracle Reports, when you interact with your formatted reports using a web browser? Also, SQL Server Reporting Services platform includes the ability for developers to embed reports into other applications.
How the Oracle Reports migration works
Our Oracle Reports migration process consists of two phases.
- First, we use the Oracle Report Converter to get an XML file from a proprietary RDF format.
- Then we process the file with the DB Best Converter and get an RDL file. As a result, we achieve an XML representation of a SQL Server Reporting Services report definition.
The majority of the migrated reports can be directly deployed to SQL Server Reporting Server and then browsed by the user immediately after an automated conversion. For more complicated cases, we go with manual polishing and use additional database objects to accomplish the migration.
Getting started
The best way to start your Oracle Reports migration to SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is to explore our future-state architectural design.
This is typically a 5 to 10 business day engagement where we:
- Evaluate your existing solution — We make precise checks of your Oracle Reports solution and find the most beneficial path for migration, depending on the operating environment of your system, and the specifics and the complexity of the reports themselves.
- Understand your specific challenges — When the current system diagnosed, we determine the most critical migration points that may require additional time and effort. For example, your existing Oracle Reports may refer to files stored on the desktop and we will migrate them to another storage accordingly.
- Develop an ROI model to justify the migration — You will get an evaluation of the migration efficiency. This means you will know exactly what your investment will be for the switch and how beneficial it is in perspective.
- Create a project plan to future-proof your Oracle Reports applications — We will work with your team to develop the migration steps and the details on the way for your solution to operate in a new environment with greater scalability at a lower cost.
Learn more
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